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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29212287">Tongues, Teeth, and Beskar Steel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkduck/pseuds/sharkduck'>sharkduck</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Depressed Homosexual Men, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:28:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,207</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29212287</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkduck/pseuds/sharkduck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>i've grown a mouth so sharp and cruel it's all that i can give to you my dear...<i></i></i><br/>--<br/>Din Djarin. Renowned bounty hunter. Din Djarin, future father. And Din Djarin, at one point painfully in love with a man he hates, both of them bound to a Creed he doesn't know if he loves anymore.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Din Djarin/Griffon Ullers, Din Djarin/OC, Din Djarin/Original Male Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. i. Hammer, Metal, Heat</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polymerclayalchemist/gifts">Polymerclayalchemist</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi grace :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Metal. Hammer. Heat. Metal. Hammer. Heat. Metal. Hammer. Heat.</p><p>The rhythm is meditative, familiar, and every tinny repetition of metal against metal soothes another open wound like a balm. He can look at his memories objectively this way, smooth them over until they’re bare creases in the fabric of his mind. Theoretically, it should be peaceful – but every clang and shower of sparks sends him back in time to a scar that simply won’t heal. Different sparks. Different sheets of metal. Different underground room. The color of the Armorer’s plate is not quite deep enough to be wine-red, but it still reminds him of singed, soot-stained cloaks.</p><p>Din squeezes his eyes so tight they hurt. Squeezes them until his temples ache, and when he opens them again he’s not the only one kneeling at the forge anymore. The Armorer continues her steady work as always, but there’s a presence that he has to turn his head to acknowledge, it sits so far out of his peripheral.</p><p>He has to stifle a groan when he catches a glimpse of an elegant cut of ebony blue-black. He knows that color. Knows the sleek silhouette too. Without even looking, he knows the Beskar loth-wolf signet polished to glittering silver on the pauldron, snarling at him as if to say: <em>how dare you sully me with your eyes?</em></p><p>It’s exactly what every depressed Mandalorian teenager sees in their frantic wet dreams, when they think of their first set of armor.</p><p>Griffon Ullers. Of Clan Ullers, of House Vizsla – <em>formerly </em>House Kryze, as if it even fucking matters anymore – as he is so eager to remind people. Not a foundling by any means. Cut from the same cloth as Paz Vizsla and his <em>true Mandalorian </em>cronies.</p><p>Mandalore. Concordia. Concord Dawn. The holy trinity producers of ancient lineages made of uptight swans, preening their feathers and hissing at anything that comes close to sully their good names. Somehow, despite the Creed, believing themselves above the rest of them with their long-ass titles and pedigrees. He swallows, clenches his fists, and waits for Ullers to say something mind bogglingly stupid.</p><p>Eventually, he does. Quiet as a wood mouse.</p><p>“Waiting for a new boot, Clanless?” He murmurs. “Or would you like mine printed on your ass?”</p><p>“You can try, Ullers,” he whispers back, “what House are you again? House of Fucking Bullshit? It changes every week – can’t ever keep track.” He hears a sound like a hissing snowstorm, a murmur under Ullers’ breath. Curses. Or maybe a growl. Can’t ever be sure.</p><p>Is he clenching his jaw under there, Din wonders? Probably. His fists are balled tight into his lap, resting on his thighs like boulders. The panels that make up the skirt-like lower part of his cuirass fan out, bird wings made of leather and steel. His legs are covered in thick nanomesh and thermal tights, enough to protect him even with his stupid skirt dripping in bands over the floor. Din doesn’t understand it – doesn’t seem practical. Doesn’t understand why they’re called something like <em>pteruges </em>either. Stupid, fancy name too hard to pronounce. Which means it fits Griffon Ullers perfectly.</p><p>“If you keep staring at me, Clanless, I’m going to give you something to stare at.”</p><p>“What? Your ass on the ground after I beat you senseless?”</p><p>“If you two are done,” the Amorer says, like it doesn’t bother her at all, continuing to hammer and hold metal that sparks against the concrete covert. “I believe Djarin and I have business.”</p><p>“As a member of House Vizsla—”</p><p>“House Vizsla is dead,” she says, <em>like it doesn’t bother her at all, </em>and even Din winces<em>.</em> “House Kryze is dead. House Saxon is dead. What have you done for the Tribe, young one, besides remind us of our loss?” She doesn’t look up from her metalwork, keeps her back to them both, and Din can feel the way Ullers shifts and tenses, rigid in every bone and muscle, every tendon straining. The not looking is what pisses him off most, Din thinks. Din also thinks, maybe, that he can hear him breathing through his teeth. Hard to tell, with the helmets. “Nothing. You preen about the covert like your boots are still covered in Mandalore sand. When you start pulling in more resources for the foundlings and the Tribe, then I will give you a place above Djarin.”</p><p>“He is barely here! He spends all his time above ground, cavorting with outsiders, and you know our Creed! How is it my fault that we can only be out one at a time? How can I bring resources and glory to the Tribe if he keeps hogging them?”</p><p>“Be faster, then. Now: begone.”</p><p>Ullers gets up with the barely hidden wobble of his legs and storms out. His stupid leather panels swish, whip-fast, damn near hit Din on the face and he’s cursing him quietly even as he watches his retreating back. He knows the pattern – Ullers will cool off, have his ego stroked by his waffling clique, and pretend nothing happened. At least until the next time he snaps like a brat and the Armorer puts him in his place.</p><p>“Why do you put up with him, sister?” He asks, trying to keep his voice neutral.</p><p>“Because he is a brother of the Way, and you are old and wise enough to know better than to feed his fire. I am disappointed.” That… hits like a slap. He doesn’t wince – never does. But he takes it and holds the sting and pretends he’ll learn something from it.</p><p>“Forgive me. You are right.”</p><p>“I know.” The Armorer holds something out for him. A knife. Sleek and silvery, with an edge that could cut transparisteel with a whisper. It’s beautiful. More than he deserves, after that downright shameful display earlier. It fits exactly right in his hand. It always does. He turns the knife over to see a signet stamped into the pommel – a mythosaur skull, the symbol of Mandalore; it’s a beautiful weapon. His heart sinks looking at it.</p><p>“Thank you, Armorer. I will use it well.”</p><p>“I know.” The blank reflection of himself through her visor stares through him, and he swallows. “You are disappointed that you have no signet?”</p><p>“No – no not disappointed just—”</p><p>“<em>Disappointed.</em>” She shrugs. “This is fine. It will be revealed to you in time – do not heed the others. Now: begone. I’ve much to do.” He nods, gets to his feet on aching legs, and sheathes his knife with a low bow that drapes his cape across the spot on his belt he hitches his new blade.</p><p>Ullers is standing cross-armed at the archway to the forge, pressed up against the wall. Din doesn’t even give him the time of day as he strides out, but Ullers still tracks him with a slow circle of his head, rigid like a statue. His helm is one of those birdlike ones – the ones that remind him of vultures. A blue-black carrion animal waiting on a moment of weakness.</p><p>Then it passes, Ullers whips around and storms into the forge, and the air doesn’t feel a damn degree warmer.</p><p>He meanders. The covert feels… strange to him now. Halfway between Home and Not Home. Maybe it’s the gaggle of “true Mandalorians” strutting around pretending like they own the concrete, but somehow Din feels more alive outside than he does inside.  Outside he’s someone – The Mandalorian, not just A Mandalorian. He’s not sure if he likes it, or if he wants to fade quietly into obscurity, sink into the covert like it’s quicksand and disappear. But then again: who would bring in money for the Tribe? Food? Beskar steel, on the rare occasion he’s blessed with it?</p><p>Ullers seems more than happy to take his place – but is Ullers more than <em>capable, </em>is the question.</p><p>He finds his way to the training hall, a repurposed part of the underground closed off by collapsed rubble, fused together with calcified groundwater glue. The children like to use the rocks to climb, finding hand and footholds and daring each other to reach the ceiling. There’s no one here now – no giggling over the bare cement; they’re all in the mess hall. He can hear them laughing, stumbling over Mando’a deeper into the covert.</p><p>He takes his knife out of its sheath and spins it, feels it whip through the air – over his hand, against his palm, through his fingers like a snake. He makes sure not to press the trigger to turn the vibration mechanism on – safety first, ironic given there are no mats here in this training room and just looking at the floor makes his bones ache with muscle memory. He moves through a few different stances. Gets lost in the flow of it, the extension of metal and flesh, the whizz of pierced air.</p><p>When he turns around to keep practicing, he jolts – minutely – when he sees a familiar shadow, a vulture-shaped visor glaring at him from the entrance to the room. He lets out a frustrated sigh. It’s like being haunted by ravens. Or his own shadow.</p><p>“What?” He snaps.</p><p>“You’re hogging the training room.”</p><p>“Plenty of space, Ullers – quit yapping like a dog and go outside if you want to so badly.” Ullers takes a half a step forward, and Din just turns and continues practicing.</p><p>“You don’t deserve that knife. Hand it over.”</p><p>“Come take it first.”</p><p>Din half-mumbles it. He expects to be able to keep practicing in peace. He certainly doesn’t expect Ullers to take him seriously. But then something barrels into his side, knocks him down – he rolls. He comes up low to the ground, clenching his fists while Ullers circles him and something about the way he moves reminds him far too much of a predator in motion. The sleek way his armor conforms to his muscles, hugs them, becomes oil slick shadow against concrete. Din curls his lip under his helm and tenses every bone into steel.</p><p>They stare at each other like that for a hard second, muscles locked.</p><p>Then Ullers makes the mistake of rushing him – like a hunter would. Bird of prey, talons extended, teeth bared. It’d be beautiful if Din wasn’t trying to not die.</p><p>Find an opening.</p><p><em>There,</em> his leg, open – too open – Din dips in and kicks out with a leg and slips under. Eel-like, flowing with the momentum instead of fighting it, and Ullers twists as he falls and grabs Din’s chest plate with tight hands.</p><p>They both fall. They both crush each other against the floor with wheezes and flying fists that connect with metal and more metal and end with split skin under gloves and stinging eyes. It’s not clean, or elegant – it’s a schoolyard dogfight with no rules and hissed curses.</p><p>Din ends up on the ground, with Ullers’ fingers hooked under his helmet, spider scrabbling to pull it off. He doesn’t think – his body moves on autopilot, finely trained and honed to a knife point. He jabs out, upper knuckles acting like bullets and striking the soft spot in between the plates of his armor. Just under his armpit. Ullers lets out a kicked dog yelp, and Din rolls. Lifts his hips. Arcs and shoves until <em>he’s </em>the one straddling Ullers’ waist now. Pinning him with all the strength he’s got in his body, arms shoved into the hard floor by the wrists.</p><p>Both of their chests are heaving. Sucking in air. Staring, blankly, at each other until Ullers shoves him off, gets up, and storms out.</p><p>Din is left staring out after him, fists clenched.</p><p>His chest feels like it’s on fire.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. ii. Prey, Predator, Carrion Birds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Two Mandalorians walk into a bar.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not until years later that Din and Ullers actually speak to each other in a way that’s not through clenched teeth. It’s not <em>cordial, </em>not by any stretch of the term – but it does happen. Occasionally.</p>
<p>Ullers has taken to sneaking out of the covert when he believes no one is paying attention. The Armorer says nothing, even as the two of them enter into something like a competition. The bounty hunter’s guild is in its infancy post-Empire, and they’ll take all the hunters they can get. Better yet that it’s two Mandalorians who can’t stand the other one winning. The covert prospers with a double income fueled by hate, but at the cost of the Tribe tiptoeing around them like bombs about to explode. The air when they meet is frigid cold. Married couple in the throes of a messy divorce. That’s how people joke behind their backs anyway.</p>
<p>They very quickly learn not to say that shit out loud soon after.</p>
<p>Occasionally they meet on the field, and that’s when things are at their tensest and most rigid.</p>
<p>Din is on Florrum, tracking – as Din does – when he sees a familiar ship screaming over the horizon. A sleek <em>Auzituck</em>-class, heavily modified, striking silver as it burns into the atmosphere and lands kilometers away, blue-black against the night sky. He knows the ship, and he knows the man flying it; more importantly he knows what he wants. He won’t get it, Din will make sure of that.</p>
<p>He damn near runs off the <em>Razor Crest’s </em>ramp and into the dirt, kicking up sand and rocks – the biotracking fob blinks a violent red in his hand. He wonders if Ullers has its twin, or if he attached something to his ship to siphon the information to his own computer like a tick.</p>
<p>Somehow, Din manages to skid into the bar before Ullers does. Heads turn to stare, owl-eyed, at him in his half-dented, scratched paint armor; his mismatched bracers, the new one shiny, polished Beskar and outfitted with new toys, freshly earned. He has never felt more self-conscious. But he straightens, steadies his breathing, and pushes his shoulders back – he’s not a very tall man, but he can look big when he wants to, and right now he cuts an intimidating enough figure looming in the doorway.</p>
<p>The bar goes stone dead silent, and not even the clinking of glass and the clatter of bottles dare to crack the heavy quiet. The music is deafeningly loud, and even still it beats weakly against the blanket of tension that muffles everything in the room except the shuffling of nervous feet. Strings pulled taut, nothing to do but wait. The tracking fob blinks like a strobe light, cherry red across the dusty floor as Din strides in. He tells himself he owns the dirt beneath his feet and the concrete on the walls and fingers the fob in his hand, rubbing his thumb across the dented steel. It makes him feel better – confident. Powerful.</p>
<p>“Vosk Sirsamz,” he says, and he watches the people at the bar wince in their seats. People part in waves as he moves through them, following the quick flash and flutter of the fob light. “I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold. What’ll it be?”</p>
<p>He stops behind a shivering Weequay man with his face all but plastered to the bar, trying to hide in the sleek faux-chrome, stained countertop. Din leans in. The light is screeching solid red now, glaring violently in Vosk’s face as Din plants his free hand on his shoulder. Just when he thinks the poor man can’t be more tense than he already is, he seizes up even further, magically, and probably snapping a few tendons in the process. He feels like rock under Din’s hand.</p>
<p>The door to the bar opens, and Din swears – <em>shit – </em>under his breath. He’s dallied too long, trying to be a big man.</p>
<p>He turns his head towards the door, more annoyed than anything else, and watches Ullers shaking with rage against the horizon. He’s almost crushing the tracking fob in his blue-black hand, squeezing it so hard Din can almost hear the steel bending. He straightens up and stares at Ullers with his hand still on Vosk’s shoulder, clutching it tight. Claiming him.</p>
<p>They face off, two wolves over a carcass, growling and snarling with maws dripping red.</p>
<p>Neither of them speaks. Din just waits – because Ullers <em>always </em>cracks first, always has, and this time will be no different. Ullers just points, stiff at the arm and jabbing the tracking fob towards Vosk like it’s a weapon.</p>
<p>“Give me the target,<em> dar’aliit.</em>” Din prickles all the way up to the nape of his neck. <em>Dar’aliit. </em>It’s a targeted word – it means bounty hunter, sometimes.</p>
<p>But it also means clanless. Tribeless. An outsider.</p>
<p>An orphan. A child abandoned by war or choice.</p>
<p>Din snaps.</p>
<p>He pulls his blaster before he thinks, pulling Vosk in front of him like a shield as he stops forward and puts it right – in – Ullers’ face, clicking the safety off as he breathes hard through his teeth and boils all over with rage. He is a pot left on the fire too long and Ullers is the idiot stoking the oven.</p>
<p>“Call me <em>dar’aliit </em>again,” he hisses. It hurts more than <em>clanless. </em>It hurts more than anything Ullers could have ever said to him, to be reminded so deeply of the two fundamental truths of his existence: that he is an orphan twice over, and he doesn’t belong anywhere. It’s a word that compounds everything he hates on top of each other, drives it through his chest until he bleeds out into his stupid, stolen armor that isn’t truly his and never will be.</p>
<p>He thinks Ullers might be smiling under that helmet of his. He thinks he can see the curl of his lips beneath the thick vulture-shaped transparisteel of his visor.</p>
<p><em>“Dar’aliit,</em>” he says, smooth and purring, and the coldest chill drags its fingertip up the divot of Din’s spine, “what else would I call you, Clanless? You don’t have a name I want in my mouth.” He stops breathing, stops thinking – bluescreens, as he takes the butt of his blaster and smashes it right into that horrible vulture window and hopes it breaks. Ullers makes a noise – surprise? Doesn’t matter – before Din throws his quarry to the side and pounces.</p>
<p>He should have just fucking shot him. Ullers is prepared this time. He kicks Din off of him and into a table, and it smashes beneath his weight. Something about the way Ullers stalks towards him with his fists clenched, fob forgotten in the dirt and quarry scrambling away from the carnage makes Din thinks he’s grinning under there.</p>
<p>He struggles up and shakes his head. Clears it. Tries to focus, because right now he’s staring down a circling predator and trying to keep it from tearing into his skin with bared teeth.</p>
<p>They rush each other and meet in the middle with battle roars, barreling headfirst into furniture and narrowly avoiding fleeing cantina patrons. Somehow he manages to scramble up to his feet, and he’s <em>losing.</em> He’s never done that before. Not in the decades they’ve known each other.</p>
<p>They’re far enough away from each other that Din tries something new, shoots his arm out and a cable strikes towards Ullers’ leg like a snake. But then he wraps it around his arm and suddenly there’s pain, so much pain, as Ullers hits <em>something </em>under his forearm and electricity jams itself right into his hand. He really should have figured that he isn’t the only one with toys to play with.</p>
<p>There’s a knee connecting to his jaw, knocking him right to the floor. He tastes iron in his mouth, his eyes tumbling and freewheeling around in his skull. Ullers rolls him over and straddles his waist. He stops thinking.</p>
<p>There’s a voice in his head that tells him that thinking too much is going to get him killed, right here in this nasty cantina full of owl-eyed witnesses. So he stops, very obediently. His body moves on its own as he catches Ullers’ raised fist, clutching his breastplate in his hand and yanking him down to meet Din’s waiting forehead. They both rattle, hard, in their big tin buckets, and Din thinks he might have split one of his brows open with the way he feels something warm and wet on his half-numb cheek.</p>
<p><em>“Fuck!”</em> He’s not sure who screams. Could be Ullers. Could be him. Could be one of the patrons in the bar.</p>
<p>They both manage to stumble to their feet holding their heads, and once again they face off with heaving chests and hard breath.</p>
<p>And then Ullers freezes, staring blankly across Din’s broad shoulder. Very carefully, very conscious of the fact that this very well could be a trick, Din turns his aching head.</p>
<p>There’s a Weequay child standing knock-kneed in the doorway, clutching a half-ragged plush toy that might have been a tooka at some point. Now it’s faded, lumpy and old, ears and buttons sewn on and repatched and stitched up. They swallow. They can’t be more than six or seven <em>(his age, when—)</em> Ullers sucks in air under his helmet and makes no sudden moves.</p>
<p>The Weequay kid lets out a quiet whimper, and half a second later Ullers makes a noise that might have been halfway regretful, if Din wasn’t stupid and didn’t know that he isn’t capable of such a thing. Ullers kneels down – slow – and reaches out a hand.</p>
<p>The kid takes a furtive step backwards.</p>
<p>“Oh! It’s okay!” It’s the softest Din might have ever heard Ullers speak. He tries to dredge up a memory of watching him interact with the Tribe’s children but – it occurs to him he can’t. That he’s been away for too long, probably. Every other memory is bitterly tainted in his mouth, and he chokes them down.</p>
<p>“It’s okay – I’m a person. Like you. See?” Slowly, Ullers plucks off one of his gloves, and Din follows the motion of fabric revealing deeply tanned skin, fascinated by the slow chrysalis from cloth to flesh. His hands look calloused, well-worn. Din has no idea why he ever thought they’d look delicate under those gloves, or why he ever thought of Ullers’ hands at all.</p>
<p>There’s still a strip of thermal mesh covering the back of his palm, looped around his ring finger. Din – for some reason he itches to reach out and tug it off, see every centimeter of ruddy skin. Maybe he’s just starved to know what’s under the armor. Everyone he knows is so – rigid, sharp. No softness.</p>
<p>Nothing like the way Ullers reaches out to this child, and even Din knows he’s smiling underneath. So gentle and so calm, and the farthest cry from the snarling grin he thought was under the helm two seconds ago.</p>
<p>The kid takes a hesitant step forward and pokes Ullers’ palm with one leathery finger. They let out a quiet <em>“oh!”</em> and poke it again. “Your skin’s all weird! It’s soft!”</p>
<p>Ullers chuckles. “Yes – I’m a human. I don’t have leathery skin like yours.”</p>
<p>“Why not? Are you sick?”</p>
<p>“No. Your people come from a world with a very, very hot sun – your skin makes you special and it helps protect you from the sun rays.”</p>
<p>“Like your armor?”</p>
<p>“Yes.” Ullers looks over at his bounty sitting on the floor, trying to hide under the bar overhang, staring at the two of them and only breathing when he really has to. He looks back at the kid. “Now, child: it’s very late. Are you supposed to be out of bed?” The way they hide behind their deformed tooka plush says everything. “Can you get back to your room on your own?”</p>
<p>They take one look at Din and scurry to hide as much behind Ullers as they can. Obviously scared. Obviously not wanting to move, not with a hunter in the room, not with Din knowing they’re there. Ullers looks over at him and holds his gaze for a very long, very tense moment, shoulders locked in place. Concern? Annoyance? Rage?</p>
<p>Finally he just – sighs.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry child, I’ll make sure nothing gets you. Come.” He gets up and holds out his ungloved hand, letting the Weequay child guide him through the threshold while their big, owlish eyes stare holes into Din’s face.</p>
<p>He has the courtesy to put the bounty on the ship and wait outside the cantina until Ullers leaves, minutes later and with the air around him at a rolling boil. Din doesn’t know what to say. He tries something neutral.</p>
<p>“Hey,” he starts, neither here nor there, “what you did back there—”</p>
<p>Ullers punches him so hard his helmet vibrates against the wall. It exacerbates his already-aching skull. When he can finally blink away the stars and see again, he watches Ullers’ ship take off with a raging screech, burning silver against the atmosphere.</p>
<p>Ungrateful bastard.</p>
<p>Hyperspace travel from Florrum to Dantooine is – tense. Not because there’s anyone in the <em>Razor Crest </em>to be tense with. Just tense.</p>
<p>Din can’t stop thinking about Ullers’ upturned palm, the copper-brown tone of his skin. He expected pale. Silvery, like the trim on his armor and the snarling loth-wolf skull on his signet. He manages, in the hours between planetary systems where time bends around the prow of his ship, to convince himself that it’s professional curiosity.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>MANDO'A TRANSLATION:</p>
<p><i>dar'aliit:</i> Clanless, an orphan, an outcast. Lit. "no longer of a clan, family, or tribe."</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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